Category: Artificial reproduction

A Russian woman wants 105 surrogate babies – and has the money to pay for them

BioEdge

Michael Cook

The Russian media has been abuzz with the news that a 23-year-old woman from Moscow named Christina Ozturk and her husband have embarked upon the ambitious project of having 105 of their own biological children. They already have 11 in their household – one which Christina had herself, and 10 in the last two years with surrogate mothers.

Mrs Ozturk met her 56-year-old husband, Galip, a Turkish businessman living in Georgia, at a resort in Batumi, where there is a well-established surrogacy industry. Each child costs about 8,000 Euros, but Mr Ozturk, who owns a chain of hotels, says that he can handle it easily. The Turkish media describes him as a billionaire, although he denies this. The project seems to have been his idea. . . [Full Text]

How Surrogacy Arrangements Fail Children

Public Discourse

Seow Hon Tan

Surrogacy ad
Ad for surrogate mothers, Burbank, California, USA. Cory Doctorow, Flickr

Surrogacy arrangements are in the spotlight again. Recently, Chinese actress Zheng Shuang was accused by her former partner of abandoning two babies conceived through surrogacy in the United States. Apparently, she wanted the surrogates to undergo abortion when she broke up with him. But abortion was not feasible, as the surrogates were in the third trimester of pregnancy.

Surrogacy supporters tend to emphasize how much children are desired and valued by commissioning parents. . .

It is surprising that the best interests of the child have been so neglected in debates over the ethics of surrogacy. After all, adoption and custody decisions focus on the best interests of the child. The truth is, surrogacy undermines the human flourishing of surrogates and children. In this essay, I will lay out a few reasons why such separation is not in the best interests of the child, focusing particularly on what we can learn from relevant scientific data. These reasons suggest that lawmakers should not legalize surrogacy. . . [Full text]

Australia to vote on ‘three-person baby’ IVF

Australia is set to have the first conscience vote since the same sex marriage debate to decide whether to allow “three-person baby” IVF.

news.com.au

Samantha Maiden

Australia is set to have the the first conscience vote since the same sex marriage debate on allowing “three-person baby” IVF to enable healthy babies to be born to women carrying deadly mitochondrial disease.

The reforms, which have already been approved in the UK, follow what was described as the world’s most comprehensive global scientific and ethical review of the treatment over a 10-year period.

At least 60 Australian babies born each year suffer with severe and life-threatening forms of mitochondrial disease that could be prevented by using the mother’s and father’s nuclear DNA and replacing the mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy mitochondrial DNA from a donor egg. . . [Full Text]

Accused of abandoning two babies in the US, this Chinese celebrity has sparked a national debate about surrogacy

CNN

Nectar Gan

Ad for surrogate mothers, Burbank, California, USA
Ad for surrogate mothers, Burbank, California, USA. Cory Doctorow, Flickr

(CNN)At first, it seemed like a classic celebrity romance.

Zheng Shuang, 29, was one of China’s most popular actresses after shooting to fame a decade ago. Zhang Heng, 30, was a talented producer for a variety show. In 2018, the pair went public with a set of couple selfies, and often appeared affectionately in the spotlight afterward — even co-starring in a popular reality series.

So fans were shocked when Zhang took to China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo earlier this month to claim he has been stranded in the United States for more than a year, left alone to “take care of and protect two young and innocent lives.”

The couple was believed to have split while two surrogate mothers they hired were pregnant with their kids, with Zheng accused of abandoning the babies.

A Chinese media outlet subsequently publicized alleged photos of the children’s birth certificates, which showed they were born in December 2019 and January 2020 in the US. Zhang and Zheng were named as their parents.

It also published a recording of an alleged phone call, during which Zheng’s parents allegedly suggested abandoning the children or giving them up for adoption, while Zheng allegedly expressed frustration that abortion was not a viable option given the mothers were 7 months’ pregnant at the time. . . continue reading

Rules for doctors, pharmacists tightened in new religious discrimination bill

Sydney Morning Herald

Judith Ireland

A pharmacist could refuse to dispense contraception and a doctor could refuse to provide fertility treatment under the government’s proposed new religious discrimination laws, provided they declined to provide that particular service to all patients.

Attorney-General Christian Porter said the second draft of the religious discrimination bill, released on Tuesday, would allow doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and psychologists to conscientiously object as long as it was “to a procedure, not a person”. . . [Full text]